Anchorman Sequel Gets Green Light

Will Ferrell made a surprise in-character appearance as the dim-witted fictional San Diego newsman Ron Burgundy on last night's installment of Conan, to announce that there will indeed be a sequel to his hit 2004 film, Anchorman.

Having never made it all the way through the original, it's difficult to get worked up over news of a sequel. Not since Rob Reiner's This is Spinal Tap, a mockumentary lampooning a '70's metal band, has a subject of satire been this easy to ridicule.

With rare exception -- Fox 5's credible Paul Bloom comes to mind -- most local news anchors are attractive potted plants capable of reading copy composed by someone else from off a teleprompter. The jokes are built-in; by their very nature most news-readers do little more than earn viewers' satirical contempt. This is the stuff 7 minute SNL skits are made of, not full-length feature films.

Ferrell and director/co-writer Adam McKay got the idea for their spoof from watching a documentary about a female reporter trying to crack the sexist boy's club that is TV news. "The documentary's unintentionally funny interviews with male anchors," wrote the U-T's Preston Turegano, "were the inspiration for Burgundy's (chauvinistic) personality."

Ferrell and McKay are expected to once again write the script, with McKay directing, and Judd Apatow will return to produce. Expect it to hit theatre screens sometime in late 2013.